Uncanny X-Men #17 Review

With Magneto now out of the picture, this series has to hustle a bit to pick up the slack. Brian Bendis shifts the focus back to his cast of youngsters with issue #17. This begins as a fairly standard field trip storyline, as Professor Magik dumps the kids in a hostile environment and leaves them to fend for themselves. Luckily, the conflict takes on a few wrinkles as it wears on, resulting in a few key developments and teases for the future of the series.

One welcome storytelling decision is to not set this issue in the Savage Land, as has been done so often before, but in the more recent creation of Tabula Rasa. It's a setting that winds up playing into the abilities of several characters. Benjamin, Fabio and Eva, in particular, are the source of some interesting new developments. After a year of development, this book has progressed to the point where the younger cast can support stories well enough all on their own. And again, with one of the X-franchise's most perpetually fascinating characters in the wind, that's a more necessary quality than ever.

Chris Bachalo returns to the series after taking a couple issues off. He brings a welcome sense of style, though the washed out colors and abstract environments don't always do justice to the Tabula Rasa setting. Bachalo is able to differentiate the many characters in terms of anatomy, body language, and facial expressions so that there's never any confusion as to what's unfolding on the page, despite the fairly low-key costume designs and smaller panel work.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.

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